


Blind Eye

by epkitty



Category: Aesop's Fables
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-28
Updated: 2011-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-16 00:35:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epkitty/pseuds/epkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sex in a cave. Oh, and a moral.  (It's Aesop, after all.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blind Eye

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Tarot card 10, The Wheel. A word about the fandom: this story is based on an Aesop’s Fable, 'Death and Cupid,' as found in Harold Bloom's collection, "Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages."

All the spring long, Love had toiled with his bow and arrows, stirring up those tender feelings amongst the shepherds and their shepherdesses, whilst the sheep gamboled and strayed throughout the green grasses and blooming clover.

He had enticed young maids to kiss their sweet stable boys, and old maids to pay nice attentions to the milkmen. His wicked darts had seared the hearts of forlorn soldiers, sailors adrift, washing women, and dairymaids. They all found love.

But at season's end Love himself was half done-in with weary wings and drooping eyelids, so he stepped from the air upon the highest branch of the tallest tree and held his hand above his eyes to shield them from the Sun, searching the never-ending landscape until his glance lighted upon the most inviting grotto.

Willow trees bowed before the dark purple entrance that opened to a lazy pond all streaked through with sunlight.

Love stepped once more upon the air, his heavy wings catching even the lightest breeze, to descend the length of a field and forest until he glided over the greeny pond dappled with lily pads and the pink-white flowers the dragonflies so loved to lounge upon. Love followed the dragonflies with their silver-veined wings toward the shadows of the swaying willow trees.

He sighed as his toes dipped into the cool water, his head falling back, hair ruffled by the passing air. The water reached just below his knees when bare feet touched the muddy bottom.

The spring birds and bugs sang all around him in a chorus, and he had no eyes but for the dark, round cave that beckoned so graciously. His eyes blinking with sleep, Love's wingtips tapped the pond's surface as he walked up the shallow bank onto cool stone. Without thought, he rested his beautiful golden bow in a cranny within the mouth of the cave and carelessly unhooked the golden quiver with its invisible arrows, leaning it with the bow.

Pleased to see a layer of moss smoothing the cave's entrance, Love sank to the floor in the shadows and lay back, his head resting on one arm as he surrendered after the long Spring to sleep.

= = = = =

Death was deep in his own dreams when an intruder disturbed his slumber, and he woke to see the silhouette of a manly young god daring to step within his grotto. Death kept still and watched the Adonis cast aside his arms and lay down upon his bed of moss.

When he was quite sure the youth slept, Death stood and walked on quiet feet to the cave entrance to examine the god's fine body, all new and polished with gold and white wings splayed indecently aside in his rest.

Knowing the needs and hungers of young gods, Death departed the cave, leaving him to sleep in peace, and gathered up those fruits which give the nectar of gods, and carried them back to his home in the grotto within his simple wooden bowls.

And since Death has so rarely a pause in his labor, he lay down beside Love to enter again those dreams that only gods can know.

= = = = =

There is no witness to how long they slept, but for the dragonflies, who each live but a day, and had no knowledge that there had ever been anything but two sleeping gods in the grotto.

But Love lay down to rest in Spring, and was woken in the crunch of Autumn by a solid and heavy hand on his shoulder, brushing away a rusty orange leaf.

"Time to wake. You've been here long enough."

Love opened his clear and shining eyes to the sight of an old and terrible god - beautiful in his age and terror - and sat up.

Death held out the wooden bowl, where the fruit of Spring still sat as fresh as though it had been picked but moments before, and the gods ate of it together.

"Will you tell me," Love asked, "how you come to be here?"

"That question is mine, for it is you who sleep upon my threshold," Death replied.

"I did not know," Love said.

"There need be no apologies between us," Death said. "But if you so desire, I should accept a kiss."

Love smiled shyly and then showed his white teeth as he bit into the last of the fruit, its juice staining pink bow-lips.

Death leaned in to suck away the sweetness, his tongue rough on such soft skin, and Love kissed him back with all the aroused joy in his heart.

"You may claim more than a kiss," Love said, "for I cannot in my life recall a sweeter waking."

"I shall," Death said, "for such gifts are rarely bestowed upon me, and a foolish god I would be to say you nay."

Love spread out his wings on the ground as he lay back again in the hollow of the moss his body had pressed through all the summer months, and Death loomed over him, as he looms over all, black wings echoing the shape of the cave ceiling above, and kissed the plump lips that smiled at him so.

Love caressed the body above him, a body hard and strong with years. His young calves drew Death in, his clever hands drew Death down.

Death's strong hand mashed the last of the fruit's pulp between strong hands and sought with unerring fingers the entrance to Love's body.

In a moment of tamed passion, Love held himself still, inviting the new lover in, opening his body the way he opened humans' hearts. He let the fingers in, fingers worn as his were with the handling of a bow.

Love's wings shivered on the ground, sweeping aside the felled leaves at each pass as those fingers surged in deeper.

With the patience only Death can know, the older god opened his lover, fingers careful, lips testing that fine, golden skin, leaving barely a mark to show that Death had passed this way.

Love began his crooning song, tempting Death closer, giving up his control and his body, languishing under the confined attention of the dark and solid gaze.

Care in all his gentle motions, Death lifted one strong leg with a hand under the knee and Love lifted himself with the passionate desire of one who feels every glancing brush until the ruddy phallus touched him and breached him and moved so deep within him.

Their panting breaths shuddered in the close cave, and Death's straining wings blew a wild wind out over the filmy pond, sending the dead leaves scuttling over its surface like fairy boats.

Wanton in his ecstasy, Love's fingers clawed the mossy bed as his teeth bit the firm lips that kissed his gasping mouth.

Death clutched his lover to him and sped his pace, hips a cantering beast as he surged again and again like the tide, rushing into delight, and withdrawing with regret to thrust forward with vigor again.

Their uncouth vocalizations startled the birds from their perches, and Love called out blindly in words that were not words as Death slowly killed him in his own little way.

Feeling his climax coming upon him, Love mangled his cries, clenched his lover's taut arms, and flailed his wings about in abandon. At this abrupt motion, a clatter rang through the dark cave, but Love paid no passing thought to his spilled arrows, only answering again that heavy rhythm of passion demanded of him.

Death clung tight, heaved forward, felt the clutching spend of his lover's body and died a little himself as he thrust in crazy, frenzied stabs until he felt himself blinded and whipped and strung out upon the finest nerve.

Heavy breathing was all that was left them as they kissed in cozy brushes of lips and in due course rose to slip into the chill water to bathe.

Their feet stirred up the muddy pond scum, but the surface was clean and pure as they poured water over one another and relied no more on words to speak.

As the Autumn sun dried their hair and feathers, they sat together amongst the willow trees, regretting that it was time again to work, and no more sleep would be had by them for a very long while.

But as Love turned to gather his arms, he stopped in sudden shock at the realization that he had not set his quiver aside alone, as he had thought.

Beside the golden quiver, knocked from its cranny in the wall, lay the tarnished leather quiver of a much older god.

Death drew up beside him and looked in vain at two quivers thrown into disarray.

They knelt upon the moss, but Death's arrows were no more visible to any eyes than Love's and so they could only do their best to gather those which lay nearest.

They parted with a kiss and a sad look, for there had been no way to tell for certain.

That is why, to this day, some in only the blush of youth are pierced by Death's arrow, and those in the settling sleep of age are pricked by Love's keen dart.

= = = = =

The End


End file.
